4. These are academic/ legal assignments, so the most crucial information to use is the law. That might sound trite, but think about the sources of law we study: legislation (Acts and Regulations further to Acts), case law and the Constitution. When you are researching and analyzing a legal problem, go to the sources of law first. Read and APPLY the statute and then use other legal sources to enhance your analysis.

5. Sourcing your writing: I must emphasize again how incorrect sourcing of references is a problem in university assignments, including yours. I can’t tell you how many of you incorrectly used lengthy direct quotes which you copied right from a source, but failed to use quotation marks and/or a source identifying page or paragraph numbers, or “n.p.” if that information was not available.

e.g. APA is so simple that it defies all logic that students can’t use it correctly. It is (author’s last name, year), or (author’s last name, year, page or para number, or n.p., written as p. number). Substitute author for organization and year for “n.d.” if no date of publication is given. There, that’s the essence of it. It takes one second to do and eliminates all suspicions of plagiarism. And, it shows respect for the intellectual property of the written words belonging to others.

6. Reference Lists: Robo-reference lists are awful! Please don’t use them! Please consider that the purpose of the reference list is providing crucial information to the reader to follow up your sources because they are deemed by you to be important to your assignment. For instance, when the robot is sourcing the Competition Bureau, it writes it as “Canada, C.B.”. What author/ organization is that? What the robot is trying to say is the “Government of Canada. Competition Bureau.” “Canada,C.B.” does not convey accurate information to the reader that the Competition Bureau is a federal government agency. You need to know that to understand its jurisdiction and to access its website.

Subject of the Assignment

The subject of the assignment is price fixing, a type of competition restriction prohibited in the marketplace pursuant to the federal Competition Act, 1985, R.S.C., c. C-34 (“the Act”). The federal Competition Bureau is an administrative tribunal, overseen by its Commissioner, and authorized by this statute to investigate and adjudicate matters pertaining to violations of the Competition Act.

Purpose of the Assignment

The purpose of the assignment is for you to understand how price fixing is determined, a very important marketplace restriction, and to give you experience reviewing a statute so you understand how to use a statute to describe and define legal subjects and processes.
This assignment will require you to identify relevant sections of the statute which describe the prohibited activity of price fixing and the procedures and penalties set out for such illegal behavior.
You will also learn how the federal Competition Bureau regulates and governs marketplace activities in Canada, how the consumer is protected in this statutory regime, how liability is established against companies alleged to be engaged in anti-competitive behavior, and the punishments for companies which violate the statute.
The assignment also gives you the necessary exposure and practice in legal writing and research for the next assignment on professional regulation.

Content of the Assignment

The assignment should respond to the following questions and include the following information:

1. What is the purpose of the Competition Act, 1985? Please quote specific section(s) of the Act and/or the Competition Bureau website as required.

2. Please provide a short description of the activities of the Competition Bureau, the administrative tribunal which hears competition violations and decides on appropriate sanctions and punishment, and of the Competition Commissioner who oversees the operations of the Bureau. Please quote specific section(s) of the Act and/or the Competition Bureau website.

3. What is the mandate of the Competition Bureau? You will have to research this and quote or refer to specific sections of the Act and refer to the website as required.

4. What are the mission and value statements of the Competition Bureau? You will have to research this and quote or refer to specific sections of the Act and/or refer to the website as required.

5. What is the role of the Competition Commissioner? You will have to research this and quote or refer to specific sections of the Act and/or refer to the website as required.

6. Please give a brief description of the Competition Bureau’s website. What types of information are provided? Please also provide the URL.

7. What is the public complaints process available for consumers or companies to report a competition violation? Please quote or refer to specific sections of the Act and to the Competition Bureau’s website as necessary.

8. What is price-fixing? Please define the competition violation of price fixing. Please quote or refer to specific sections of the Act and/or refer to the website as required.

9. Once a complaint has been received by the Competition Bureau it must investigate. What is the investigation process used by the Competition Bureau? How is the matter adjudicated or resolved? You must review the Act in order to describe the process. This will take careful reading of the statute. Please quote or refer to specific sections of the Act as required.

10. What are the penalties for price-fixing set out in the statute? Please quote or refer to specific sections of the Act.

11. What happened to Loblaw’s grocery stores in this bread price fixing case? Please refer to the article uploaded on URCourses, and explain how Loblaw’s situation relates to procedures and/or possible penalties under the statute. Please quote or refer to specific sections of the Act as required.

12. How does the Immunity Program of the Competition Bureau operate? Please quote or refer to specific sections of the Act and to the Competition Bureau’s website as necessary.

13. Outcome to date: What has happened since the article I uploaded was published? There are ongoing developments in this case so current news articles and updates on the Commission website will be helpful in your summary of the next steps.

14. Conclusion: What did you discover about this legislative framework to investigate and punish anti-competitive behavior? What is its purpose? Does the Loblaw’s case stand as an example of how this works? Etc.

Format of the Assignment

Answer the questions above in order.
Please use Times New Roman, 12 point font, double spaced.
You must use page numbers (bottom/centre of the page) in your assignment.
Please use a separate Title Page and a separate Reference List.
Please use APA citation style. If you are not familiar with how to correctly source references in a university assignment, please review this very carefully. You will lose marks if you source incorrectly or fail to source your writing.
Do not use footnotes or endnotes.
You must use the appropriate statute citations. There are hundreds of examples in the text so please review this part of your writing carefully. There are some rules in legal writing which are the expected form. Please use them.
Remember that the name of the statute and the case is always italicized.
The first time you refer to a case or a statute you must use the full legal citation. E.g. Smith v. Jones, 2013 SKCA 127 (CanLII) or The Business Corporations Act, R.S.S. 1978, c. B-10, etc. THIS IS A LEGAL WRITING RULE. DON’T BREAK IT!
Thereafter, you may use a short form of the case name or statute title without the full citation as long as you have so noted this in your first reference. E.g. Smith v. Jones, 2013 SKCA 127 (CanLII) (“Smith”), or The Business Corporations Act, R.S.S. 1978, c B-10 (“SBCA”) or (“the Act”).
Do not use the quotation marks around the short form title or the Act.
If you are referring to only one statute in your assignment, which is likely in this assignment, you can refer to that statute as the Act after the first reference to it following the full legal citation.
All Saskatchewan statutes use “R.S.S.” (Revised Statutes of Saskatchewan) or “S.S. (Statutes of Saskatchewan) to denote the jurisdiction in their title.
Statutes from any other jurisdiction than Saskatchewan use specific letters for their province. E.g. “R.S.A” (Revised Statutes of Alberta); or “S.A” (Statutes of Alberta), “S.O” (Statutes of Ontario).
The Competition Act is a federal statute. Federal statutes are designated as “S.C”, Statutes of Canada, and “R.S.C” which means “Revised Statutes of Canada”.
These notations are your clue as to the jurisdiction of the statute. Please make sure you note this carefully in all your legal research.
Specific sections or “provisions” (it means the same thing) of a statute are denoted by a section number, using a small “s”. E.g. s.27(1)(e). This is read as “Section 27, subsection (1)(e), or Subsection 27(1)(e).
You may also use “Section” or “section” written out in full. Do not capitalize “section” within the text, only if you are beginning a sentence with the word. Don’t begin a sentence with capital “S” only, (e.g. “S. 35 of the Act provides…” ). This is incorrect style. You must write out the word section in full.
Multiple sections are noted as “ss.” followed by the sections numbers: E.g. ss. 25-31, or the word “sections 25-31” written out in full.
DO NOT write out the section numbers in words: e.g. section thirty-three. This is not correct legal style and just looks weird to a trained legal writer! Use s.33 or section 33 instead.

Research Required

You have to do some research in this assignment. Find out how the Competition Bureau functions, how the Competition Commissioner is appointed and under what authority s/he functions. What is price fixing? Look at some academic/legal references so you understand the nature of anti-competitive practices in the marketplace. Source them in your answer. Review the Competition Act, 1985, R.S.C. c. C-34. These are all required parts of the assignment.
NOTE: You MUST USE academic /legal reference(s) to understand the nature of anti-competitive behavior in the marketplace. That includes your text, at a minimum, and any other legal/ academic articles or texts.
Make sure to refer to the statute thoroughly in your paper as it provides the legal authority for the Competition Bureau and Commission to function, and defines and describes illegal anti-competitive activities and the penalties for those activities.
Please pay careful attention to which sections of the statute are relevant, how to cite and quote specific sections of the statute and how to properly cite the statute.
If you have used external research, please include a separate page for the Reference List after the answers to the questions, above. Make sure to format the Reference List sources properly, using APA.